Provisioning is the process of preparing and equipping a communications network to allow it to provide services to its users. In a video content network, consumer premises equipment (CPE), such as set-top terminals (STTs, also referred to as set-top boxes or STBs), is provisioned by downloading applications and the like from an upstream node; for example, a head end. Some systems employ the OpenCable Application Platform, or OCAP, which is an operating system layer designed for consumer electronics that connect to a cable television system. Digital storage media command and control (DSM-CC) is a toolkit for developing control channels associated with MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 streams.
OCAP uses a DSM-CC Object Carousel (OC) to deliver applications to a set top box. The OC is a virtual file system. It defines path like structures to individual files. OCAP leverages this specification to construct application locators (in Universal Resource Locator—URL—form). A compressed file, specifically a Java Archive (JAR), is also a virtual file system. Compressed file data is represented as entries within the JAR. The URL and carousel descriptors do not support indexing within a file. As such, applications must exist, on the OC, in un-compressed form.